Manage Your Storage

Be it the closet by the door or a vacant room upstairs or several shelves in your garage, it is always wise to manage your storage space.

Keep it clean. Keep it dry. Keep things in boxes and properly label them. Invest or make racks, shelves, drawers and hooks to keep things organized. Make sure you won't trip on things. Make sure kids will not be able to easily wander in, or if they do, won't get seriously injured by protruding poles and heavy-duty equipment. Make sure to stack dangerous substances (like poison and paint) well out of children's reach. Dispose of anything and everything you need not keep.

And make this as something you practice everyday so it won't be a big chore you would resist doing. Things have a way of piling up so it's best that we do it right from the start. Less work in the long run.

This way, when your husband comes home on a Friday night with the HDMI cable he'd be installing the following Monday, your family need not be tripping over it the entire weekend. And finding things would be easy, even in the dark after a stormy night led to a blown fuse.